Gravity incidents

2001/11/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Astronomia

We will not deny that the Earth is round, but at least it will not be a totally uniform sphere. Fluctuating mass density and distance to center appear on the Earth's surface, causing changes in gravity.

But, in addition to these circumstances, other slow processes that occur on Earth, such as the melting of the poles, cause small changes of gravity over time. Therefore, the Grace mission has been launched to measure all these changes.

This satellite can measure very small variations of gravity, being 100 times more accurate than the data obtained to date. The differences in severity are measured based on their influence on the orbital movement of satellites and carry out a thorough monitoring of the changes that occur in this mission in the distance between several Grace satellites.

Although we are not yet aware of all the uses this technique can have, we can analyze, among other things, how the structure of the Earth, the oceans and the climate is modified.